Joe Gilmartin, who was the Professional Basketball Writers Association's first president (1972) and wrote for the Phoenix Gazette, enters the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame today in Springfield, Mass., as the winner of the Curt Gowdy Media Award.

A former Suns beat writer, Suns broadcast analyst, columnist and sports editor, Gilmartin, 84, will receive the same honor Suns play-by-play announcer Al McCoy received on the broadcast side in 2007.

"Number 1, I'm astonished," Gilmartin told azcentral sports when he was told he'd won the honor in February. "Number 2, I'm pleased. Maybe they want to put me in for all the geezers from my generation."

Gilmartin's career began in Wichita and included more than 30 years as a columnist and sports editor for the Gazette. Along the way, he covered 15 NCAA Final Fours, including the classic 1957 semifinal when Wilt Chamberlain and the Kansas Jayhawks lost in triple overtime to North Carolina.

"I've run into a lot of newspaper men over the years, and to me, of all the people I've worked with, he always stood out," said Al Bianchi, who played in the NBA, coached in the ABA and NBA and occasionally occupied one of the hot seats behind a front-office desk.

"I've always marveled at Joe because he understood the game so well and could write about it with his subtle touch of humor.

"So even when he's killing you, he still makes you laugh."

Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins can attest to that. Gilmartin captured the flair and the frustration that was "The Hawk" during his playing days when he called him "a work of art — on some nights poetry in motion, on some nights, still life."

Hawkins once told Tom Ambrose, a former Suns marketing and media man, that it was one of the best lines ever written about him.

"He was hard on me sometimes like that, but he was trying to bring out the best in me," Hawkins told Ambrose for his book "Notes from the Wacko File!"

Gilmartin joined the Gazette in 1962 as assistant sports editor before becoming sports editor in 1963 and continuing to write a column until 1996. He was named Arizona Sportswriter of the Year a record 16 times